KTF Sports’ driver had very different races in Red Bull Ring

This weekend, between September 9 and 11, the Red Bull Ring Circuit, in Austria, hosted the activities of the 8th round of the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine – FRECA. With almost 40 cars on the grid, the drivers and teams faced different challenges from the normal ones, mainly due to the constant climate change throughout the activities.

With a fantastic regularity throughout the season, the Brazilian Gabriel Bortoleto had, once again, the chance to show his skill facing different conditions of track and grip throughout the weekend.
Always among the 10 fastest on the track in the practice sessions, Bortoleto went confidently to the Qualifying session that defined the starting grid of the first race. However, with the wet track, he ended up not getting an ideal track positioning which made him make one lap less than competitors and, with that, scored the sixth time in his qualifying group that, consequently, represented the 11th position for the grid of the first race.

About 30 minutes before the start it started to rain in the Spileberg region completely watering the track. Thus, the cars went to the grid with the WET type tire. However, it quickly stopped raining and, of course, the asphalt was drying. The race was allowed to start with the cars following the Safety Car. At the time of the release of the race itself, the R-Ace GP team called Bortoleto to the pits in a strategy to change their tires for the Slick type. The risky decision put Gabriel at the end of the pack, but ended up not working very well. The race had two Safety Car interventions and even a red flag. With this, the running time was small and, with this, Bortoleto could not recover so much in the race receiving the flag in the 16th position.

BACK TO THE POINTS

As in all stages of FRECA on Sunday, a new Qualifying session and a new race were held. This time, with dry track, Gabriel was better in the classification getting the fifth position of the grid for the start.
On the race, after a good start, the driver of the car #85 of the R-Ace GP team was always in the first pack. In a calmer race, compared to Saturday, he was in the direct fight for the first positions, but with competitors who had cars with very similar performance was practically impossible to gain more positions.So at the end of the 30 minutes he received the flag in 5th place which earned him another 10 points in the Championship.

After eight rounds of FRECA, Gabriel Bortoleto now occupies the sixth position in the Championship with 127 points. There are still two rounds before the end of the season being the ninth round Barcelona – ESP, between 14 and 16 October and, following that, Mugello – ITA, between 21 and 23 October.

Pictures: disclosure

Press office of Gabriel Bortoleto
Responsible journalist: Flávio Quick